Tag Archives: Blackberry

A few days ago, I was assisting someone who was set on returning their newly purchased Samsung Galaxy S3, because despite all of its bells and whistles, still managed to lack one feature in particular – a universal search function. This happened to be a deal breaker for him, so he was ready to pay a restocking fee and reactivate his prehistoric blackberry back onto his phone number. Apparently dealing with its slower than slow browser capabilities were more than worth it if he was able to search his entire phone contents with a couple clicks of his qwerty keyboard. For some reason, this didn’t sit well with me. I mean to each their own, but his new phone was light years ahead of what he was about to go back to. It’s like he had a Maserati for a day, but was about to turn the keys in and pull out of the lot with his Ford Tempo that he traded in only a day earlier.

I was not about to let the sheer awesomeness of this device slip through this guy’s hands, all because of one measly little universal search function. No. Not happening on my watch.

When the S3 came out, it actually did have this function built into the operating system, but because of Apple’s lawsuit regarding infringement Samsung removed this ability from the phone, essentially “dumbing down” its flagship device. Don’t even get me started with this, cause I would like to keep this post to a relatively easy read. That being said…

I had about 2 minutes while I was processing the return, to save this guy from making a huge mistake. Thank you 4GLTE, because within no time I was able to search the Google Play store and find and download Vtap by Veveo onto my own phone to test it out. It’s a 3rd party universal search function, and within seconds I was hooked, and I was sure the guy standing across from me would be too as soon as I showed him this needle in a haystack. Seriously, I felt like Christopher Columbus, except for the fact that Vtap isn’t exactly America. After the initial setup it worked flawlessly! I was able to find contacts, apps, music, text messages, emails, utilities and other essential things on my phone quickly and easily. For a full description of what the app is capable of, click on the link above, which will take you to Google Play Store.

As if this awesome app isn’t enough…wait for it…

After, you download the application, you can go into your widgets and you now have a Vtap universal search widget that you can put on one of your customizable screens. It’s the little things that make me happy. I swear.

Long story short, remember the gentlemen I was talking about earlier, well after I showed him Vtap, he kept the Maserati = )

If you’re trying to use your browser on your blackberry device and seeing this little gem of an error message above, rest assured it can be fixed in about 1 minute. This error message will happen on a blackberry that was once connected to an enterprise server in the past, but is no longer. This is caused by the Desktop [BrowserConfig] service books still being present on the device. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it, and just follow the steps below to get your browser up and running in no time.

Click on OPTIONS from the main screen.

Select ADVANCED OPTIONS.

Click on SERVICE BOOKS.

Highlight the first Desktop [*] service book in the list. You will probably need to scroll down the list.

Press the MENU (blackberry) key, and click DELETE.

Perform step 4 and 5 for ALL of the remaining desktop service books. Just scroll down the list and do one at a time until you get to the last one.

Now, your browser will be working again, and you can revel in its super speedy capabilities (sarcasm).

Scrolling through your emails can be a tedious task, especially if your inbox is overflowing. It’s not like you’re training your thumb to go for the gold in this Summer’s trackball olympics or anything right? Here is a much faster way to get the job done…

Press “t” for top and “b” for bottom when you are in your inbox. That’s it. Simple enough, right?

This shortcut works for your email and text messages on most blackberry devices. This is also a great little trick if your trackball is being unresponsive. For a complete list of shortcuts, please visit Blackberry Shortcut Keys.

What would you do if you pulled up your contact list and it was blank? The years and years of contacts have mysteriously vanished. If this thought isn’t enough to give you an anxiety attack, I don’t know what is, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Sure, if you have an iPhone, maybe you have iCloud, or if you are an Android user you hopefully have them backed up with Google or maybe even your service providers backup options.

Let’s ask one important question though…What if these fail? After all, things like this can happen, and this possibility combined with some really awful luck can make for a really, really bad day. That being said, it is ALWAYS a good idea to NOT have all your eggs in one basket…err backup option.

This app is available to iPhone, Android and Blackberry users. It is free, although I would say it is worth it’s weight in gold if you ever have the unfortunate event of ever needing to actually use one of the backups that you create with it.

After downloading the app and launching it for the first time, you will be required to create an iDrive account.

1. Use an email address that you plan on having access to until your last days on earth (in case you ever need to reset your password).

2. Create a password.

3. Click the grey SignUp/Sign In button in the middle of the screen.

You will have to wait a minute or so while your account is being created. If you hit Backup, do not be alarmed if it says your address book is empty. Give it a second and then try and press the backup button again. It will work.

After the Backup in progress screen is finished loading, you will have just saved copy of your CURRENT contact list from TODAY’S date. (This app does not automatically back up, and you will have to launch it periodically to create new backups)

If you are using this to RESTORE contacts, after downloading and signing into the app with the original account that you created (here’s where that email address will come in handy if you have forgotten your password), click on Restore and it will take you to a screen that looks like this. Simply, click on Restore Contacts and pick the latest saved file.

There are many apps available with the ability to backup your contact list, but the reason I am recommending this one is because I use it almost every day and have never had it fail me once. I should probably knock on wood now huh? Regardless of the way that you choose to backup your contact list, just make sure that you have a “Plan B” for your “Plan A.” So, in the event of a catastrophic address book deletion, you can put the Xanax down, click a button and say Voila! Thus, avoiding disaster in a matter of minutes. ::Pats self on back::